Research Team

Field Research supervisors

  • Agnieszka Dragon community practitioner, project coordinator, and researcher based in Warsaw and London. Her practices explore local identity and narratives of various communities by ecological activities and hands-on involvement. She graduated in Cultural Studies at Warsaw University and Research Training Program at Institute of Sociology, Humboldt University in Berlin. Her recent research has an emphasis on identity and trust, where she explores social capital within the community of allotment gardeners. She is a member of Zasiej Association that promotes seed sovereignty and inclusive green spaces. Allotment gardener in ROD ‘Pratulińska’ in Warsaw. Since 2015 she is documenting Warsaw's allotments on Warszawscy Działkowcy

  • Anna Dańkowska educator, researcher, project coordinator in the fields of global, ecological, and transformative non-formal education for sustainable development. Since 2018 at The Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe, where she coordinates and leads ecological programs and sustainability team. Graduate of Environmental Engineering at Wrocław University of Technology and Cultural Studies of Latin America at University of Warsaw. As a Mexican government scholarship holder, she has conducted her own research project on the role and perception of water by indigenous communities in southern Mexico. As part of the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) scholarship she led a research project about bottom-up initiatives for sustainable development in Berlin, such as urban gardens and open workshops.

  • Elena Ferrari - is an urbanist, landscape designer, and researcher based in Berlin. She recently completed her PhD in Urbanism at Iuav University of Venice with a dissertation entitled “In-between Nature”, which addressed the concept of the 'hybrid urban landscape’ in contemporary Berlin. She is interested in the interconnection between human and nature in cities. Currently, her research focus includes marginal urban landscapes, emerging forms of urban gardens and citizen science. She is also a co-creator of a grassroots mapping pilot project of Berlin's urban soil (co-funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 frame-work) and part of Feld Food Forest community (Berlin).

Project supervisors

  • Dagmar Haase (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) - is a professor in urban ecology and urban land use modelling. She holds a PhD from the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg. Dagmar is professor at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany, and Guest Scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ. Dagmar's main interest and activities are settled in the combination and integration of global urbanization modelling and the quantification and assessment of ecosystem services, disservices, green infrastructure and social-environmental justice issues in cities and urban areas including urban land teleconnections. She works at different spatial scales, from the global to the local and neighbourhood scale. Conceptually, Dagmar’s Lab bases its work on the idea of emergence, resilience and sustainability of social-ecological coupled systems. Geographically, her focus areas are situated in Europe and in Russia. She is author of over 160 ISI-listed scientific publications. In 2010, Dagmar was Fellow of the International Environmental Modelling & Software Society (iEMSs), in 2014, she received the AXA Award for research on “Resilient Cities”. In 2016, Dagmar held the Honorary Wallenberg Professorship of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

  • Jakub Kronenberg (University of Łódź) — his research focuses on economy–society–environment interactions, in particular from the perspective of ecological economics. He works at the University of Lodz, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, where he leads the Social-Ecological Systems Analysis Lab. He gained international research experience while working in France, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the Kyrgyz Republic. Since 2009 he is member of the board of the Sendzimir Foundation that promotes sustainable development in Poland. While not working, he may be bird-watching or travelling.

  • Annegret Haase- is a senior researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ in Leipzig, Germany. She works at the Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology. Her research foci are sustainable urban transformations, social-environmental processes and trade-offs in cities, urban land use and blue-green infrastructure, socio-spatial inequalities, environmental justice and gentrification, urban diversity and arrival areas, local governance and participation. She is, among others, leading to nationally-funded (BMBF) research project teams working on the cooperative development of urban green spaces in arrival areas and migration-related social conflicts in cities at UFZ.

Intern

  • Leonie Sommer - Bachelor student in geography at Humboldt University, Berlin. She starts to specialize on urban ecology, green infrastructure, and urban development. After finishing school she volunteered for one year at "Grüne Liga Berlin e.V." a nature conservation association. She was mainly working in urban gardening and environmental education and one of the persons responsible for the community garden project founded by the NGO. Moreover, she wrote articles for the NGO´s magazine "Der Rabe Ralf" about environment and sustainability. Privately, she is also a passionate allotment and community gardener.
    • Email: somerleo@hu-berlin.de